Posted
by
Zonk
on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @02:53PM
from the president-uses-google-as-verb-goog-stock-rises dept.

prostoalex writes "The President of the United States feels Americans should be able 'to Google their tax dollars', and has signed a law that will create an online database to track federal spending. According to the Associated Press, the 'law is aimed preventing wasteful spending by opening the federal budget to greater scrutiny. The information is already available, but the Web site would make it easier for those who aren't experts on the process to see how taxpayer dollars are being spent.'"

No kidding. This is, however, a good idea (dare I say it). Bush and co. need to be held accountable to where the citizens tax dollars go.
That being said, however, i'm sure that the 85% that goes into the military will just be marked 'military', and not
"Dick's new private jet: $15M; Haliburton (just cause): $5B; Bribes (Murdoch & co): $10b; etc.. ; Seeing Dick shoot that guy in the face: priceless;"

But I digress... Of course it's typical political tactics starting this initiative. This way, when the GOP is being tarred and feathered for robbing the good American people blind, the Bushites can say 'But we were the ones who opened up transparency in the buget! Look, we made a blog thing that says so! It runs on the tubes, and is bigger than a truck! It's not our fault, we did everything we could!"

Thank Goodness someone pointed this out. It was never a White House initiative, and many members of Congress had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to make it happen. For the interested, here is a link to Senator Obama's semi-regular podcast, where he outlines the bill and what he and Coburn set out to do with it.

Meanwhile, in the White House, the president and a few staffers are having lunch:

W: I can't believe we still haven't killed that guy.Staffers:....?Chief of Staff: Killed who, W?W: Obama bin Laden. He's killed Americans, and now he wants us to google the budget, I can't believe we haven't been able to git him.Chief of Staff: SENATOR Obama and OSAMA bin Laden are not the same person.W: Huh? (eats)

Stevens placed the hold on the bill because he was worried that it would create more bureaucracy to create and maintain such a massive database, Saunders said. He also wanted to see a cost-benefit analysis before granting approval, he said.

I demand a hold be put on Stevens' cost-benefit analysis, as it would be too costly to draw up.